Relevant Excerpts from Lake Update Webinars, page-87

The topic covered in this transcript is: Describing the last 30 days of Scott Munro's progress points leading into the DFS - Part A: Overall DFS process design and progress on commercialising the Power solution.
Sourced from Update Webinar #2 on 28/9/23
Commentary made by Scott Munro - SVP Technology Strategy and Risk

KG: That's fantastic. Scott, perhaps if we could go into a little bit about what you've been up to in the last 30 days since we last met and walk through some progress points onto the DFS?

SM: So, as I mentioned to Karen before, project management is not really a spectator sport. So, it can look a little bit boring if you look at it in 30-day increments. So, where we are in summary, is we're on track for DFS by the end of the year. So, that's the major headline. What does that mean? Well, in terms of process design, as Jonathan mentioned today, we've essentially now frozen the process design for the phase one plant - that's now fixed. It's the basis for all of our modelling, all of our engineering design work…..and we're using that as the basis of the DFS – so that's frozen. That's great, that means we can free up all of the other work streams.

Power is another area where people were asking lots of questions. So, we are just about to conclude all of the engineering work that will support the DFS. That work was being conducted by Districuyo in Argentina - they're completing that for us at the moment and we have a third-party consultant (GME) who is reviewing the commercial output for that to validate that it can be used in our DFS. So, again in terms of DFS positioning, we are where we want to be at this point. We are about three months from delivery of this document, so we're progressing well. For the next phase of power, we need to transition from design, from feasibility to commercial agreements (PPA’s) - that's a condition precedent for moving the project forward. So, we are now in the process of ramping up our efforts on commercialisation of the power solution. So that's engagement with independent power producers (IPP’s). We have five now who have expressed an interest to participate in the commercial process and that commercial process will commence in the next quarter and we would hope to conclude that prior to…..well it's a condition precedent so we need to have it closed before we move on to the next phase of the project. In terms of the rest of the DFS materials, process design and power are massive inputs for us.